History 101

In 1907 the Heinze Brothers thought Investors were Shorting the Stock of their United Copper Company

Buying and selling stocks is one way to get rich. Typically by buying low and selling high. But you can also get rich if the stock price falls. How you ask? By short-selling the stock. You borrow shares of a stock that you think will fall in price. You sell them at the current price. Then when the stock price falls you buy the same number of shares you borrowed at the lower price. And use these to return the shares you borrowed. You subtract the price you pay to buy the cheaper shares from the proceeds of selling the costlier shares for your profit. And if the price difference/number of shares is great enough you can get rich.

In 1907 the Heinze brothers thought investors were shorting the stock of their United Copper Company. So they tried to turn the tables on them and get rich. They already owned a lot of the stock. They then went on a buying spree with the intention of raising the price of the stock. If they successfully cornered the market on United Copper Company stock then the investors shorting the stock would have no choice but to buy from them to repay their borrowed shares. Causing the short sellers to incur a great loss. While reaping a huge profit for themselves.

Well, that was the plan. But it didn’t quite go as planned. For they did not control as much of the stock as they thought they did. So when the short-sellers had to buy new shares to replace their borrowed shares they could buy them elsewhere. And did. When other investors saw they weren’t going to get rich on the cornering scheme the price of the stock plummeted. For the stock was only worth that inflated price if the short-sellers had to buy it at the price the Heinze brothers dictated. When the cornering scheme failed the stock they paid so much to corner was worth nowhere near what they paid for it. And they took a huge financial loss. But it got worse.

The Panic of 1907 led to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913

After getting rich in the copper business in Montana they moved east to New York City. And entered the world of high finance. And owned part of 6 national banks, 10 state banks, 5 trusts (kind of like a bank) and 4 insurance companies. When the cornering scheme failed the Heinze brothers lost a lot of money. Which spooked people with money in their banks and trusts. As these helped finance their scheme. So the people rushed to their banks and pulled their money out. Causing a panic. First their banks. Then their trusts. Including the Knickerbocker Trust Company. Which collapsed. As the contagion spread to other banks the banking system was in risk of collapsing. Causing a stock market crash. Resulting in the Panic of 1907.

Thankfully, a rich guy, J.P. Morgan, stepped in and saved the banking system. By using his own money. And getting other rich guys to use theirs. To restore liquidity in the banking system. To avoid another liquidity crisis like this Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act (1913). Giving America a central bank. And the progressives the tool to take over the American economy. Monetary policy. By tinkering with interest rates. And breaking away from the classical economic policies of the past that made America the number one economic power in the world. Built on a foundation of thrift, savings, investment, free trade, the gold standard, etc. Where people saved for the future. The greater their savings the more investment capital there was. And the lower interest rates were.

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) changed all of that. By printing money to keep interest rates artificially low. Giving us boom and bust cycles as people over invest and over build because of cheap credit. Leading to bubbles (the boom) in asset prices that painful recessions (the bust) correct. Instead of the genuine growth that we got when our savings determined interest rates. Where there is no over-investing or over-building. Because the limited investment capital did not permit it. Guaranteeing the efficient flows of capital to generate real economic activity.

Warren Harding’s Tax Cuts ignited Economic Activity and gave us the Modern World

Thanks to the Fed there was a great monetary expansion to fund World War I. The Fed cut the reserve requirements in half for banks. Meaning they could loan more of their deposits. And they did. Thanks to fractional reserve banking these banks then furthered the monetary expansion. And the Fed kept the discount rate low to let banks borrow even more money to lend. The credit expansion was vast. Creating a huge bubble in asset prices. Creating a lot of bad investments. Or malinvestments. Economist Ludwig von Mises had a nice analogy to explain this. Imagine a builder constructing a house only he doesn’t realize he doesn’t have enough materials to finish the job. The longer it takes for the builder to realize this the more time and resources he will waste. For it will be less costly to abandon the project before he starts than waiting until he’s built as much as he can only to discover he will be unable to sell the house. And without selling the house the builder will be unable to recover any of his expenses. Giving him a loss on his investment.

The bigger those bubbles get the farther those artificially high prices have to fall. And they will fall sooner or later. And fall they did in 1920. Giving us the Depression of 1920. And it was bad. Unemployment rose to 12%. And GDP fell by 17%. Interestingly, though, this depression was not a great depression. Why? Because the progressives were out of power. Instead of the usual Keynesian solution to a recession Warren Harding (and then Calvin Coolidge after Harding died in office) did the opposite. There was no stimulus deficit-spending. There was no playing with interest rates. Instead, Harding cut government spending. Nearly in half. And he cut tax rates. These actions led to a reduction of the national debt (that’s DEBT—not deficit) by one third. And ignited economic activity. Ushering in the modern world (automobiles, electric power, radio, telephone, aviation, motion pictures, etc.). Building the modern world generated real economic activity. Not a credit-driven bubble. Giving us one of the greatest economic expansions of all time. The Roaring Twenties. Ending the Depression of 1920 in only 18 months. Without any Fed action or Keynesian stimulus spending.

By contrast FDR used almost every Keynesian tool available to him to end the Great Depression. But his massive New Deal spending simply failed to end it. After a decade or so of trying. Proving that government spending cannot spend an economy out of recession. But cuts in government spending and cuts in tax rates can. Which is why the Great Recession lingers on still. Some 6 years after the collapse of one of the greatest housing bubbles ever. Created by one of the greatest credit expansions ever. For President Obama is a Keynesian. And Keynesian policies only lead to boom-bust cycles. Not real economic growth. The kind we got from classical economic policies. Built on a foundation of thrift, savings, investment, free trade, the gold standard, etc. The economic policies that made America the number economic power in the world.

History 101

(Originally published September 18th, 2012)

Under the Bretton Woods System the Americans promised to Exchange their Gold for Dollars at $35 per Ounce

Wars are expensive. All kinds. The military kind. As well as the social kind. And the Sixties gave us a couple of doozies. The Vietnam War. And the War on Poverty. Spending in Vietnam started in the Fifties. But spending, as well as troop deployment, surged in the Sixties. First under JFK. Then under LBJ. They added this military spending onto the Cold War spending. Then LBJ declared a war on poverty. And all of this spending was on top of NASA trying to put a man on the moon. Which was yet another part of the Cold War. To beat the Soviets to the moon after they beat us in orbit.

This was a lot of spending. And it carried over into the Seventies. Giving President Nixon a big problem. As he also had a balance of payments deficit. And a trade deficit. Long story short Nixon was running out of money. So they started printing it. Which caused another problem as the US was still part of the Bretton Woods system. A quasi gold standard. Where the US pegged the dollar to gold at $35 per ounce. Which meant when they started printing dollars the money supply grew greater than their gold supply. And depreciated the dollar. Which was a problem because under Bretton Woods the Americans promised to exchange their gold for dollars at $35 per ounce.

When other nations saw the dollar depreciate so that it would take more and more of them to buy an ounce of gold they simply preferred having the gold instead. Something the Americans couldn’t depreciate. Nations exchanged their dollars for gold. And began to leave the Bretton Woods system. Nixon had a choice to stop this gold outflow. He could strengthen the dollar by reducing the money supply (i.e., stop printing dollars) and cut spending. Or he could ‘close the gold window’ and decouple the dollar from gold. Which is what he did on August 15, 1971. And shocked the international financial markets. Hence the name the Nixon Shock.

When the US supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War the Arab Oil Producers responded with an Oil Embargo

Without the restraint of gold preventing the printing of money the Keynesians were in hog heaven. As they hated the gold standard. The suspension of the convertibility of gold ushered in the heyday of Keynesian economics. Even Nixon said, “I am now a Keynesian in economics.” The US had crossed the Rubicon. Inflationary Keynesian policies were now in charge of the economy. And they expanded the money supply. Without restraint. For there was nothing to fear. No consequences. Just robust economic activity. Of course OPEC didn’t see it that way.

Part of the Bretton Woods system was that other nations used the dollar as a reserve currency. Because it was as good as gold. As our trading partners could exchange $35 for an ounce of gold. Which is why we priced international assets in dollars. Like oil. Which is why OPEC had a problem with the Nixon Shock. The dollars they got for their oil were rapidly becoming worth less than they once were. Which greatly reduced what they could buy with those dollars. The oil exporters were losing money with the American devaluation of the dollar. So they raised the price of oil. A lot. Basically pricing it at the current value of gold in US dollars. Meaning the more they depreciated the dollar the higher the price of oil went. As well as gas prices.

With the initial expansion of the money supply there was short-term economic gain. The boom. But shortly behind this inflationary gain came higher prices. And a collapse in economic activity. The bust. This was the dark side of Keynesian economics. Higher prices that pushed economies into recessions. And to make matters worse Americans were putting more of their depreciated dollars into the gas tank. And the Keynesians said, “No problem. We can fix this with some inflation.” Which they tried to by expanding the money supply further. Meanwhile, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on October 6, 1973, kicking off the Yom Kippur War. And when the US supported their ally Israel the Arab oil producers responded with an oil embargo. Reducing the amount of oil entering America, further raising prices. And causing gas lines as gas stations ran out of gas. (In part due to Nixon’s price controls that did not reset demand via higher prices to the reduced supply. And a ceiling on domestic oil prices discouraged any domestic production.) The Yom Kippur War ended about 20 days later. Without a major change in borders. With an Israeli agreement to pull their forces back to the east side of the Suez Canal the Arab oil producers (all but Libya) ended their oil embargo in March of 1974.

It was Morning in America thanks to the Abandonment of Keynesian Inflationary Policies

So oil flowed into the US again. But the economy was still suffering from high unemployment. Which the Keynesians fixed with some more inflation. With another burst of monetary expansion starting around 1975. To their surprise, though, unemployment did not fall. It just raised prices. Including oil prices. Which increased gas prices. The US was suffering from high unemployment and high inflation. Which wasn’t supposed to happen in Keynesian economics. Even their Phillips Curve had no place on its graph for this phenomenon. The Keynesians were dumfounded. And the American people suffered through the malaise of stagflation. And if things weren’t bad enough the Iranians revolted and the Shah of Iran (and US ally) stepped down and left the country. Disrupting their oil industry. And then President Carter put a halt to Iranian oil imports. Bringing on the 1979 oil crisis.

This crisis was similar to the previous one. But not quite as bad. As it was only Iranian oil being boycotted. But there was some panic buying. And some gas lines again. But Carter did something else. He began to deregulate oil prices over a period of time. It wouldn’t help matters in 1979 but it did allow the price of crude oil to rise in the US. Drawing the oil rigs back to the US. Especially in Alaska. Also, the Big Three began to make smaller, more fuel efficient cars. These two events would combine with another event to bring down the price of oil. And the gasoline we made from that oil.

Actually, there was something else President Carter did that would also affect the price of oil. He appointed Paul Volcker Chairman of the Federal Reserve in August of 1979. He was the anti-Keynesian. He raised interest rates to contract the money supply and threw the country into a steep recession. Which brought prices down. Wringing out the damage of a decade’s worth of inflation. When Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidency he kept Volcker as Chairman. And suffered through a horrible 2-year recession. But when they emerged it was Morning in America. They had brought inflation under control. Unemployment fell. The economy rebounded thanks to Reagan’s tax cuts. And the price of oil plummeted. Thanks to the abandonment of Keynesian inflationary policies. And the abandonment of oil regulation. As well as the reduction in demand (due to those smaller and more fuel efficient cars). Which created a surge in oil exploration and production that resulted in an oil glut in the Eighties. Bringing the price oil down to almost what it was before the two oil shocks.

Week in Review

As the U.S. fiscal year draws to a close the Republicans and Democrats are digging in their heels over the upcoming debt ceiling debate. The Republicans want to cut spending and taxes to rein in out-of-control spending. So they don’t have to keep borrowing money. Running up the national debt. The Democrats, on the other hand, say, “Who cares about the debt? We’ll be dead and buried when the nation collapses under the weight of this mammoth debt load. As long as we get what we want why should we care about future generations?” At least, that’s what their actions say.

A lot of leading economists on the left, Keynesians economists, see no problem in running up the debt. Print that money, they say. Keep that expansion growing. What could possibly go wrong? Especially when the federal government has the power to print money? Just look at what the Japanese did in the Eighties. And what the Chinese are doing now (see As the West Faltered, China’s Growth Was Fueled by Debt by Christina Larson posted 9/12/2013 on Bloomberg Businessweek).

As demand for Chinese exports diminished in the wake of the financial meltdown, the Chinese economy kept humming at more than 9 percent annual gross domestic product growth each year from 2008 to 2011. The trick? “A huge monetary expansion and lending boom,” says Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management and a former professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing. With bank lending restrictions loosened in late 2008, “Total debt accelerated from 148 percent to 205 percent of GDP over 2008-12,” according to a May 2013 report from research firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. When Beijing tried to rein in the banks beginning in late 2010, shadow banking—lending outside the formal sector—exploded. Today “China is addicted to debt to fuel growth,” according to the CLSA report, with the economy hampered by “high debt and huge excess capacity with only 60 percent utilization.”

The Beijing-based firm J. Capital Research dubbed 2012 the “Year of the (White) Elephant” in a report detailing some of China’s questionable infrastructure build-out. To take one example, 70 percent of the country’s airports lose money, yet more are being built in small and remote cities. At the shiny new Karamay Airport in far western Xinjiang province, there are four check-in counters serving two flights daily. Local governments have splurged on “new towns” and “special zones,” many of which have already fallen into disrepair. The $5 million Changchun Zhenzhuxi Park, intended as a scenic area, is now a large public garbage dump, as the local landscaping bureau never agreed to provide maintenance. Near the southern city of Hangzhou, a forlorn replica of the Eiffel Tower overlooks a faux Paris—the ersatz arrondissement attracted hardly any residents, and local media have dubbed it a ghost town.

“In China, you often hear people say they’re building for the future,” explains Chovanec. “But if you build something and it’s empty for 20 years, does that make any sense? By that point, it may already be falling apart.”

The classic Keynesian argument for economic stimulus is the one about paying people to dig a ditch. Then paying them to fill in the ditch they just dug. The ditch itself having no economic value. But the people digging it and filling it in do. For they will take their earnings and spend it in the economy. But the fallacy of this argument is that money given to the ditch-diggers and the fillers-in could have been spent on something else that does have economic value. Money that was pulled out of the private sector economy via taxation. Or money that was borrowed adding to the national debt. And increasing the interest expense of the nation. Which negates any stimulus.

If that money was invested to expand a business that was struggling to keep up with demand that money would have created a return on investment. That would last long after the people who built the expansion spent their wages. This is why Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work. It is at best temporary. While the long-term costs are not. It’s like getting a 30-year loan to by a new car. If you finance $35,000 over 5 years at a 4.5% annual interest rate your car payment will be $652.51 and the total interest you’ll pay will be $4,018.95. That’s $39,018.95 ($35,000 + 4,018.95) of other stuff you won’t be able to buy because of buying this car. If you extend that loan to 30 years your car payment will fall to $177.34. But you will be paying that for 30 years. Perhaps 20-25 years longer than you will actually use that car. Worse, the total interest expense will be $23,620.24 over those 30 years. That’s $58,620.24 ($35,000 + 23,620.24) of stuff you won’t be able to buy because of buying this car. Increasing the total cost of that car by 50.2%.

This is why Keynesian stimulus does not work. Building stuff just to build stuff even when that stuff isn’t needed will have long-term costs beyond any stimulus it provides. And when you have a “high debt and huge excess capacity with only 60 percent utilization” bad things will be coming (see IMF WARNS: China Is Taking Ever Greater Risks And Putting The Financial System In Danger by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, posted 9/13/2013 on Business Insider).

The International Monetary Fund has warned that China is taking ever greater risks as surging credit endangers the financial system, and called for far-reaching reforms to wean the economy off excess investment…

The country has relied on loan growth to keep the economy firing on all cylinders but the law of diminishing returns has set in, with the each yuan of extra debt yielding just 0.20 yuan of economic growth, compared with 0.85 five years ago. Credit of all types has risen from $9 trillion to $23 trillion in five years, pushing the total to 200pc of GDP, much higher than in emerging market peers…

China’s investment rate is the world’s highest at almost 50pc of GDP, an effect largely caused by the structure of the state behemoths that gobble up credit. This has led to massive over-capacity and wastage.

“Existing distortions direct the flow of credit toward local governments and state-owned enterprises rather to households, perpetuating high investment, misallocation of resources, and low private consumption. A broad package of reforms is needed,” said the IMF.

Just like the miracle of Japan Inc. couldn’t last neither will China Inc. last. Japan Inc. put Japan into a deflationary spiral in the Nineties that hasn’t quite yet ended. Chances are that China’s deflationary spiral will be worse. Which is what happens after every Keynesian credit expansion. And the greater the credit expansion the more painful the contraction. And with half of all Chinese spending being government spending financed by printing money the Chinese contraction promises to be a spectacular one. And with them being a primary holder of US treasury debt their problems will ricochet through the world economy. Hence the IMF warning.

Bad things are coming thanks to Keynesian economics. Governments should have learned by now. As Keynesian economics turned a recession into the Great Depression. It gave us stagflation and misery in the Seventies. It gave the Japanese their Lost Decade (though that decade actually was closer 2-3 decades). It caused Greece’s economic collapse. The Eurozone crisis. And gave the U.S. record deficits and debt under President Obama.

The history is replete with examples of Keynesian failures. But governments refuse to learn these lessons of history. Why? Because Keynesian economics empowers the growth of Big Government. Something free market capitalism just won’t do. Which is why communists (China), socialists (the European social democracies) and liberal Democrats (in the United States) all embrace Keynesian economics and relentlessly attack free market capitalism as corrupt and unfair. Despite people enjoying the greatest liberty and economic prosperity under free market capitalism (Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.). While suffering the most oppression and poverty under communism and socialism (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the communist countries behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, the People’s Republic of China under Mao, North Korea, Cuba, etc.).

Week in Review

The jobs report is out. And the Left is trumpeting the great fall in the unemployment rate from 8.1% in August to 7.8% in September (see Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization posted 10/5/2012 on Bureau of Labor Statistics). This is the official U3 unemployment rate. That only counts people looking for full-time employment. It doesn’t include those working part-time because they can’t find full-time work. And it doesn’t include the people who just gave up looking for full-time work because there just isn’t any out there. Which throws a little cold water on this 7.8% number. For it doesn’t reflect a gain in new jobs. It just reflects that they are counting fewer unemployed people.

A more accurate picture of the current employment climate is the U6 unemployment rate. This number counts everyone who can’t find a full-time job for whatever reason. Some have given up their search. Some have retired early. Some are living off of government benefits. Some are working part-time jobs. Some are working a couple of part-time jobs to make ends meet. Interestingly, although the U3 rate fell 3 points the U6 rate held steady at 14.7%. Which is puzzling. For everyone included in the U3 rate is included in the U6 rate. So if U3 fell U6 should have fallen, too. For U3 and U6 generally rise and fall with each other. As they have done in the past. Such as in the years from 2006 to 2012 (pulled from the same Bureau of Labor Statistics website).

During the 2006 mid-term elections the Democrats were saying the economy was just terrible. They hammered the economic numbers saying it was one of the worst economies ever. Of course, the numbers say otherwise. Whether you’re looking at the U3 rate or the U6 rate. The economic numbers were very strong right until that sustained Keynesian monetary expansion forcing interest rates below market values and the government pressure on mortgage lenders to lend to people who could not afford a conventional mortgage blew up in their faces. Beginning with President Clinton’s Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending. Which is why these lenders turned to the subprime mortgage. Approving so many people for mortgages that housing prices soared. Creating a huge housing bubble just waiting to be pricked by a rise in interest rates. Which had to come. As expansionary monetary policy eventually creates inflation. And the only way to stop that is by raising interest rates. Which was the time bomb ticking buried deep within those adjustable rate subprime mortgages.

Facilitated by the federal government and their GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (who guaranteed and bought these toxic mortgages from the lenders they were pressuring to approve more toxic loans), subprime lending expanded. As the GSEs sold these toxic mortgages to unsuspecting investors. Which all blew up in the final months of 2008. Creating the subprime mortgage crisis. And the Great Recession. The U3 rate rose as high as 10% in the fallout from this bad Keynesian expansionary monetary policy. While the U6 rate soared as high as 17%. Great Depression unemployment levels. And neither has fallen much since these highs. As the current numbers are closer to their highs than their previous lows.

Worse, the spread between U3 and U6 is far greater under President Obama then it was under George W. Bush. Which tells us how poorly the U3 rate describes the current employment picture. The greater the spread the more meaningless U3 is. As it is simply not counting all the unemployed people in the economy. The Left trumpets the 3 point fall in September but that only brings the U3 rate down to what the U6 rate was under Bush. And the Left was calling the even lower U3 numbers under Bush some of the worst job numbers of all time. So by their own standards President Obama is a far greater disaster to the economy than George W. Bush was. For if it was horrible under Bush anything worse than Bush’s numbers must be more horrible.

When they passed the stimulus bill they promised they would have 5% unemployment by 2012. Even the president said he would be a one-term president if this didn’t happen. Despite all of their spending these numbers haven’t fallen much. Despite their Summer Recovery pronouncements of 2010. Their economic policies have all failed. And there is a simple explanation for that. Their policies were Keynesian policies. And Keynesian policies have never worked. Nor will they ever work.

Week in Review

To increase the money supply central banks can do a few different things. To stimulate economic activity. They can lower reserve requirements to stimulate money creation via fractional reserve banking. They can print money. And they can buy bonds with money they create that they inject into the economy with their bond purchases. These actions will put more money into the economy. In hopes people will use it to generate economic activity. Of course there is a tradeoff. Increasing the money supply can also create inflation. And often does. Unless the economy is so far into the toilet that no one spends any money even with all of this new money in the economy (see ECB in ‘panic’, say former chief economist Juergen Stark posted 9/22/2002 on The Telegraph).

“The break came in 2010. Until then everything went well,” Juergen Stark, the German who resigned from the ECB in late 2011 after criticising its earlier round of buying up of sovereign debt, told Austrian daily Die Presse in an interview.

“Then the ECB began to take on a new role, to fall into panic. It gave in to outside pressure … pressure from outside Europe.”

Mr Stark said the ECB’s new plan to buy up unlimited amounts of eurozone states’ bonds, announced on September 6, on the secondary market to bring down their borrowing rates was misguided.

“Together with other central banks, the ECB is flooding the market, posing the question not only about how the ECB will get its money back, but also how the excess liquidity created can be absorbed globally,” Mr Stark said.

“It can’t be solved by pressing a button. If the global economy stabilises, the potential for inflation has grown enormously.”

The European Central Bank (ECB) wasn’t trying to stimulate economic activity with these bond purchases. What they were trying to do was throw a lifeline to those nations in the Eurozone about to go belly up because no one will buy their bonds. Because the chances of them ever repaying their enormous debts are slim to none. Because of this these indebted countries have to offer very high interest rates to entice anyone to take a chance buying their risky bonds. These high interest rates, though, were hurting these countries. Increasing their financial woes. And pushing them ever closer to bankruptcy. So the ECB caved. And bought their worthless bonds. By doing something only a central bank can do. Create money out of thin air.

These additional Euros thrown into the money supply could very well end up depreciating the Euro. And sparking off inflation. Which monetary expansion ultimately does. Unless an economy is so far into the toilet that no one will spend this additional money. And it just sits in the bank. But if the economy does turn around there will be a lot more money available to borrow. At exceptionally low interest rates. So low that some will borrow it because of those low interest rates. Which could spark off inflation. Helping the Eurozone to settle back into recession.

This is not going to help anyone in the Eurozone. Especially those staring down bankruptcy. Because this won’t cut spending. This won’t reduce any deficits. And this won’t lower any debt. All of the old problems that caused their problems will still be there. Along with a new problem. Inflation. Guaranteeing that things will get worse in the Eurozone before they get better.

History 101

Under the Bretton Woods System the Americans promised to Exchange their Gold for Dollars at $35 per Ounce

Wars are expensive. All kinds. The military kind. As well as the social kind. And the Sixties gave us a couple of doozies. The Vietnam War. And the War on Poverty. Spending in Vietnam started in the Fifties. But spending, as well as troop deployment, surged in the Sixties. First under JFK. Then under LBJ. They added this military spending onto the Cold War spending. Then LBJ declared a war on poverty. And all of this spending was on top of NASA trying to put a man on the moon. Which was yet another part of the Cold War. To beat the Soviets to the moon after they beat us in orbit.

This was a lot of spending. And it carried over into the Seventies. Giving President Nixon a big problem. As he also had a balance of payments deficit. And a trade deficit. Long story short Nixon was running out of money. So they started printing it. Which caused another problem as the US was still part of the Bretton Woods system. A quasi gold standard. Where the US pegged the dollar to gold at $35 per ounce. Which meant when they started printing dollars the money supply grew greater than their gold supply. And depreciated the dollar. Which was a problem because under Bretton Woods the Americans promised to exchange their gold for dollars at $35 per ounce.

When other nations saw the dollar depreciate so that it would take more and more of them to buy an ounce of gold they simply preferred having the gold instead. Something the Americans couldn’t depreciate. Nations exchanged their dollars for gold. And began to leave the Bretton Woods system. Nixon had a choice to stop this gold outflow. He could strengthen the dollar by reducing the money supply (i.e., stop printing dollars) and cut spending. Or he could ‘close the gold window’ and decouple the dollar from gold. Which is what he did on August 15, 1971. And shocked the international financial markets. Hence the name the Nixon Shock.

When the US supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War the Arab Oil Producers responded with an Oil Embargo

Without the restraint of gold preventing the printing of money the Keynesians were in hog heaven. As they hated the gold standard. The suspension of the convertibility of gold ushered in the heyday of Keynesian economics. Even Nixon said, “I am now a Keynesian in economics.” The US had crossed the Rubicon. Inflationary Keynesian policies were now in charge of the economy. And they expanded the money supply. Without restraint. For there was nothing to fear. No consequences. Just robust economic activity. Of course OPEC didn’t see it that way.

Part of the Bretton Woods system was that other nations used the dollar as a reserve currency. Because it was as good as gold. As our trading partners could exchange $35 for an ounce of gold. Which is why we priced international assets in dollars. Like oil. Which is why OPEC had a problem with the Nixon Shock. The dollars they got for their oil were rapidly becoming worth less than they once were. Which greatly reduced what they could buy with those dollars. The oil exporters were losing money with the American devaluation of the dollar. So they raised the price of oil. A lot. Basically pricing it at the current value of gold in US dollars. Meaning the more they depreciated the dollar the higher the price of oil went. As well as gas prices.

With the initial expansion of the money supply there was short-term economic gain. The boom. But shortly behind this inflationary gain came higher prices. And a collapse in economic activity. The bust. This was the dark side of Keynesian economics. Higher prices that pushed economies into recessions. And to make matters worse Americans were putting more of their depreciated dollars into the gas tank. And the Keynesians said, “No problem. We can fix this with some inflation.” Which they tried to by expanding the money supply further. Meanwhile, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on October 6, 1973, kicking off the Yom Kippur War. And when the US supported their ally Israel the Arab oil producers responded with an oil embargo. Reducing the amount of oil entering America, further raising prices. And causing gas lines as gas stations ran out of gas. (In part due to Nixon’s price controls that did not reset demand via higher prices to the reduced supply. And a ceiling on domestic oil prices discouraged any domestic production.) The Yom Kippur War ended about 20 days later. Without a major change in borders. With an Israeli agreement to pull their forces back to the east side of the Suez Canal the Arab oil producers (all but Libya) ended their oil embargo in March of 1974.

It was Morning in America thanks to the Abandonment of Keynesian Inflationary Policies

So oil flowed into the US again. But the economy was still suffering from high unemployment. Which the Keynesians fixed with some more inflation. With another burst of monetary expansion starting around 1975. To their surprise, though, unemployment did not fall. It just raised prices. Including oil prices. Which increased gas prices. The US was suffering from high unemployment and high inflation. Which wasn’t supposed to happen in Keynesian economics. Even their Phillips Curve had no place on its graph for this phenomenon. The Keynesians were dumfounded. And the American people suffered through the malaise of stagflation. And if things weren’t bad enough the Iranians revolted and the Shah of Iran (and US ally) stepped down and left the country. Disrupting their oil industry. And then President Carter put a halt to Iranian oil imports. Bringing on the 1979 oil crisis.

This crisis was similar to the previous one. But not quite as bad. As it was only Iranian oil being boycotted. But there was some panic buying. And some gas lines again. But Carter did something else. He began to deregulate oil prices over a period of time. It wouldn’t help matters in 1979 but it did allow the price of crude oil to rise in the US. Drawing the oil rigs back to the US. Especially in Alaska. Also, the Big Three began to make smaller, more fuel efficient cars. These two events would combine with another event to bring down the price of oil. And the gasoline we made from that oil.

Actually, there was something else President Carter did that would also affect the price of oil. He appointed Paul Volcker Chairman of the Federal Reserve in August of 1979. He was the anti-Keynesian. He raised interest rates to contract the money supply and threw the country into a steep recession. Which brought prices down. Wringing out the damage of a decade’s worth of inflation. When Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidency he kept Volcker as Chairman. And suffered through a horrible 2-year recession. But when they emerged it was Morning in America. They had brought inflation under control. Unemployment fell. The economy rebounded thanks to Reagan’s tax cuts. And the price of oil plummeted. Thanks to the abandonment of Keynesian inflationary policies. And the abandonment of oil regulation. As well as the reduction in demand (due to those smaller and more fuel efficient cars). Which created a surge in oil exploration and production that resulted in an oil glut in the Eighties. Bringing the price oil down to almost what it was before the two oil shocks.

Economics 101

A High Savings Rate provides Abundant Capital for Banks to Loan to Businesses

Time. It’s what runs our lives. Well, that, and patience. Together they run our lives. For these two things determine the difference between savings. And consumption. Whether we have the patience to wait and save our money to buy something in the future. Like a house. Or if we are too impatient to wait. And choose to spend our money now. On a new car, clothes, jewelry, nice dinners, travel, etc. Choosing current consumption for pleasure now. Or choosing savings for pleasure later.

We call this time preference. And everyone has their own time preference. Even societies have their own time preferences. And it’s that time preference that determines the rate of consumption and the rate of savings. Our parents’ generation had a higher preference to save money. The current generation has a higher preference for current consumption. Which is why a lot of the current generation is now living with their parents. For their parents preference for saving money over consuming money allowed them to buy a house that they own free and clear today. While having savings to live on during these difficult economic times. Unlike their children. Whose consumption of cars, clothes, jewelry, nice dinners, travel, etc., left them with little savings to weather these difficult economic times. And with a house they no longer can afford to pay the mortgage.

A society’s time preference determines the natural rate of interest. A higher savings rate provides abundant capital for banks to loan to businesses. Which lowers the natural rate of interest. A high rate of consumption results with a lower savings rate. Providing less capital for banks to loan to businesses. Which raises the natural interest rate. High interest rates make it more difficult for businesses to borrow money to expand their business than it is with low interest rates. Thus higher interest rates reduce the rate of job creation. Or, restated another way, a low savings rate reduces the rate of job creation.

The Phillips Curve shows the Keynesian Relationship between the Unemployment Rate and the Inflation Rate

Before the era of central banks and fiat money economists understood this relationship between savings and employment very well. But after the advent of central banking and fiat money economists restated this relationship. In particular the Keynesian economists. Who dropped the savings part. And instead focused only on the relationship between interest rates and employment. Advising governments in the 20th century that they had the power to control the economy. If they adopt central banking and fiat money. For they could print their own money and determine the interest rate. Making savings a relic of a bygone era.

The theory was that if a high rate of savings lowered interest rates by creating more capital for banks to loan why not lower interest rates further by just printing money and giving it to the banks to loan? If low interests rates were good lower interest rates must be better. At least this was Keynesian theory. And expanding governments everywhere in the 20th century put this theory to the test. Printing money. A lot of it. Based on the belief that if they kept pumping more money into the economy they could stimulate unending economic growth. Because with a growing amount of money for banks to loan they could keep interest rates low. Encouraging businesses to keep borrowing money to expand their businesses. Hire more people to fill newly created jobs. And expand economic activity.

Economists thought they had found the Holy Grail to ending recessions as we knew them. Whenever unemployment rose all they had to do was print new money. For the economic activity businesses created with this new money would create new jobs to replace the jobs lost due to recession. The Keynesians built on their relationship between interest rates and employment. And developed a relationship between the expansion of the money supply and employment. Particularly, the relationship between the inflation rate (the rate at which they expanded the money supply) and the unemployment rate. What they found was an inverse relationship. When there was a high unemployment rate there was a low inflation rate. When there was a low unemployment rate there was a high inflation rate. They showed this with their Phillips Curve. That graphed the relationship between the inflation rate (shown rising on the y-axis) and the unemployment rate (shown increasing on the x-axis). The Phillips Curve was the answer to ending recessions. For when the unemployment rate went up all the government had to do was create some inflation (i.e., expand the money supply). And as they increased the inflation rate the unemployment rate would, of course, fall. Just like the Phillips Curve showed.

The Seventies Inflationary Damage was So Great that neither Technology nor Productivity Gains could Overcome It

But the Phillips Curve blew up in the Keynesians’ faces during the Seventies. As they tried to reduce the unemployment rate by increasing the inflation rate. When they did, though, the unemployment did not fall. But the inflation rate did rise. In a direct violation of the Phillips Curve. Which said that was impossible. To have a high inflation rate AND a high unemployment rate at the same time. How did this happen? Because the economic activity they created with their inflationary policies was artificial. Lowering the interest rate below the natural interest rate encouraged people to borrow money they had no intention of borrowing earlier. Because they did not see sufficient demand in the market place to expand their businesses to meet. However, business people are human. And they can make mistakes. Such as borrowing money to expand their businesses solely because the money was cheap to borrow.

When you inflate the money supply you depreciate the dollar. Because there are more dollars in circulation chasing the same amount of goods and services. And if the money is worth less what does that do to prices? It increases them. Because it takes more of the devalued dollars to buy what they once bought. So you have a general increase of prices that follows any monetary expansion. Which is what is waiting for those businesses borrowing that new money to expand their businesses. Typically the capital goods businesses. Those businesses higher up in the stages of production. A long way out from retail sales. Where the people are waiting to buy the new products made from their capital goods. Which will take a while to filter down to the consumer level. But by the time they do prices will be rising throughout the economy. Leaving consumers with less money to spend. So by the times those new products built from those capital goods reach the retail level there isn’t an increase in consumption to buy them. Because inflation has by this time raised prices. Especially gas prices. So not only are the consumers not buying these new goods they are cutting back from previous purchasing levels. Leaving all those businesses in the higher stages of production that expanded their businesses (because of the availability of cheap money) with some serious overcapacity. Forcing them to cut back production and lay off workers. Often times to a level below that existing before the inflationary monetary expansion intended to decrease the unemployment rate.

Governments have been practicing Keynesian economics throughout the 20th century. So why did it take until the Seventies for this to happen? Because in the Seventies they did something that made it very easy to expand the money supply. President Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold (the Nixon Shock). Which was the only restraint on the government from expanding the money supply. Which they did greater during the Seventies than they had at any previous time. Under the ‘gold standard’ the U.S. had to maintain the value of the dollar by pegging it to gold. They couldn’t depreciate it much. Without the ‘gold standard’ they could depreciate it all they wanted to. So they did. Prior to the Seventies they inflated the money supply by about 5%. After the Nixon Shock that jumped to about 15-20%. This was the difference. The inflationary damage was so bad that no amount of technological advancement or productivity gains could overcome it. Which exposed the true damage inflationary Keynesian economic policies cause. As well as discrediting the Phillips Curve.